The students in Desmond College took part in a wide range of mathematical activities in celebration of Maths Week. Maths week in Desmond College aims to promotes awareness, appreciation and understanding of maths through a huge variety of events and activities.

Desmond College staff and students embraced everything numeracy last week. Students were treated to a feast of number and numeracy for the week.

Monday kicked off with Magician Leon showing our students lots of number and problem solving tricks through the medium of magic. During the week all classes had a focus on numeracy with some fun educational lessons being taught.

Numeracy just didn’t happen in school, students had to record their ‘numeracy moments’ at home during the week and complete a picture collage on their iPad app.

The culmination of the week was a numeracy quiz for first and second year students where they showed their knowledge during the ten round brain buster.

Desmond College Transition Year students mentored First Year students in a vocabulary blitz initiative by creating interactive vocabulary games, a vocabulary rich environment and running vocabulary activities in classes facilitated by English teachers.

The busy week culminated in the hosting of a very successful ‘word of the day’ and a highly competitive ‘Spelling Bee’ spell-athon challenge in the new school library, where victorious First Year spelling winners were crowned.

This year as part of our focus on Literacy, we ran a Vocabulary Week for 1st year students. The week was a huge success.

TY students, along with their English teacher Ms Supple, designed and produced word games which were played in English classes during the week. Ms OMahony, Ms McConnellogue, Ms Griffen and Ms Ryan anchored these games in classes with support from TY students who came to help their First Year Buddies. These games focused on vocabulary and spelling.

A ‘Said is Dead’ Campaign ran for the week where students were encouraged to use a variety of different words to express themselves. An impressive poster display was on show for all to see on the library window.

Following consultation with all Subject Departments at a staff meeting, a designated Word of the Day was chosen. Students received a good note, for the correct use of the word when used in a relevant context, from their subject teachers. Winners for each day received a small prize.

Finally a Spelling Bee was held in each class with the winners going forward to a final where there were a variety of prizes to be won.

This week was a tremendous success. We look forward to running it again next year.

James Lawlor from Narrative 4 Ireland recently visited our Transition Year Students. Narrative 4 Ireland is an organization set up to try and preserve Ireland’s history of story telling.

The Irish have a long tradition of storytelling going back to the time when every clan had its own oral historian or “Seanchaí,” whose job was to observe, contemplate and then memorize the stories he was told so that he could retell them to his community.

In the retelling, the story was passed back to the people and recorded in their memories as permanently as if they were set in stone.

Irish history has been preserved through this delicate, yet eloquent oral tradition and Narrative 4 Ireland is happy to help carry it forward.

Transition Year Students pictured with James Lawlor from Narrative 4 Ireland